Trees are sanctuaries...The Wisdom of Trees

Ali Jardine

Trees are sanctuaries.
Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

Hermann Hesse

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone.

In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent.

You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them.

But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.



― Hermann Hesse
in, "Trees: Reflections and Poems"

Now and again, it is necessary to seclude yourself among deep mountains and hidden valleys to restore your link to the source of life. Breathe out and let yourself soar to the ends of the universe; breathe in and bring the cosmos back inside…
~Morehei Ueshiba

There’s nothing to prove, nothing to figure out, nothing to get, nothing to understand.
When we finally stop explaining to ourselves, we may discover that in silence, complete understanding is already there.
~Steve Hagen

The world is not a problem to be solved, it is a living being to which we belong. The world is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing. And the deepest part of our separateness from creation lies in our forgetfulness of its sacred nature, which is also our own sacred nature.
~Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Empty yourself of everything. Let the mind become still. The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return. They grow and flourish and then return to the Source. Returning to the Source is stillness, which is the way of nature.
~Lao Tsu
Tao Te Ching, Verse 16

In the woods, we return to reason and faith… Standing on the bare ground – my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space – all mean egotism vanishes.
I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents
of the Universal Being circulate through me…
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Be as simple as you can be; you will be astonished to see
how uncomplicated and happy your life can become.
~ Paramahansa Yogananda 

When we have learned how to listen to trees, 

then the brevity and the quickness 

and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts 

achieve an incomparable joy. 

Hermann Hesse 

in, Trees: Reflections and Poems